Sarah is correct. But it's not going to slow anyone down, which pushed me to ask:
Someone needs to explain to me the weird fixation on mystical powers of: gerrymandering; talking filibusters; discharge petitionsAnd out of a few replies, I thought these three were worth sharing. I'm not sure any of them are "the" answer, or if there is any particular answer, or even if it's the right question...perhaps it just seems to me that these three things are grouped together. But at any rate, here are the best answers I received (edited to remove the twitter from them).
Michael Cohen:
Silver bullet explanations for larger, institutional and intractable public policy challenges
Liam Liwanag Burke:
Great man/American Hero theory of governance causes cognitive dissonance when dealing with actual rules of order
Matt Glassman:
They play into conspiracy theories of ideologues; it's not that opposition is nearly as popular, it's that they cheat and our leaders are soft.
So that's what they said. What do you think? Other ideas? I'm definitely curious about everyone's reactions.
Posts
The other side is basically a bunch of okay/moderate guys who are scared of a small group of ideologues
ReplyDeleteDiscomfort with/ignorance of Apportionment Paradox (for gerrymandering) and Arrow's Impossibility Theorem (for filibusters and discharge petitions).
ReplyDeleteOkay, the apportionment paradox isn't strictly related to gerrymandering, but both of them are good examples of how it's impossible (mathematically impossible!) to make voting institutions work the way one naively thinks they "ought" to work
DeleteOn gerrymandering I think you're wrong. Even if it only gave the Republicans a few extra seats, that can mean a great deal in a fairly closely divided House. (And some of the attempts to "prove" gerrymandering insignificant are dubious--e.g., showing that if the boundary lines of 2002-2010 had remained in effect the Democrats would still not have gained control of the House in 2012. This ignores that on balance the 2002-2010 lines were also gerrymandered to favor the Republicans, especially after the GOP mid-decade redistrictings in Texas and Georgia. Furthermore, it is a mistake to limit the term "gerrymandering" to districts with bizarre shapes. When one can [a] draw districts with clean lines that would reflect the actual partisan balance in a state or [b] draw districts with clean lines that favor your own party, and you do [b] instead of [a], that is still gerrymandering.)
ReplyDeleteDavid, It's fair enough to say that gerrymandering does have real effects...if the parallel for to "use talking filibusters" is "get rid of all gerrymandering," then I'd agree that they are not exactly the same. And FWIW I tend to agree with both of your specific critiques.
DeleteAll that said: it's still true that people hype gerrymandering far more than it deserves. Far, far, more.
"When one can [a] draw districts with clean lines that would reflect the actual partisan balance in a state or [b] draw districts with clean lines that favor your own party, and you do [b] instead of [a], that is still gerrymandering.)"
DeleteNot sure I agree. If the Dems are all concentrated in the cities, it's quite possible that the only way to reflect the actual partisan balance is with more complicated lines.
"When one can [a] draw districts with clean lines that would reflect the actual partisan balance in a state or [b] draw districts with clean lines that favor your own party, and you do [b] instead of [a], that is still gerrymandering.)"
DeleteNot sure I agree. If the Dems are all concentrated in the cities, it's quite possible that the only way to reflect the actual partisan balance is with more complicated lines.
"When one can [a] draw districts with clean lines that would reflect the actual partisan balance in a state or [b] draw districts with clean lines that favor your own party, and you do [b] instead of [a], that is still gerrymandering.)"
DeleteNot sure I agree. If the Dems are all concentrated in the cities, it's quite possible that the only way to reflect the actual partisan balance is with more complicated lines.
Quite often one could extend urban districts to exurban/rural areas and have mildly Democratic districts without any grotesque lines. (Yes, sometimes this would mean transforming majority-minority districts into white-majority ones, but not always. There are quite a number of white-majority Democratic urban districts.)
DeleteExamples: for the Indiana 1st Congressional District, have it (as in 2002-2010) extend south of Lake County rather than eastward to Michigan City. With Michigan City in the 2nd District, the Democrats would have retained the 2nd in 2012 and would thus have had three Representatives (out of nine) from Indiana instead of two--which is closer to their overall strength in the state. In Ohio, instead of combining Kaptur's district (Toledo) and Kucinich's (west side of Cleveland) each district could have been combined with some less urban counties (with a rural district eliminated), and each district would still be somewhat Democratic-leaning, with the result that Ohio would now have five Democratic Representatives (instead of four) out of sixteen--again at least a little bit closer to the actual balance of votes in that state. In Michigan, it would be easy to make the suburban 11th District less Republican. In New Jersey, instead of combining Bill Pascrell's district with Steven Rothman's, both districts could have been extended to suburban/exurban territory and still remain fairly comfortably Democratic, while a Republican district (e.g., Lance's) could have been the one to be eliminated. In none of these states were the final boundaries really grotesque-looking, but in all they reflected deliberate partisan choices which left the state's delegations more Republican than the states themselves were--and which could have been avoided with about equally compact alternative districts.
Here's one for Matt Glassman's theory (they cheat and we're soft): from the otherwise intelligent and duly bowtied Pete Morici, here's a Foxnews column about why the, er, 'slim'down is as much Obama's fault as Congressional Republicans. Halfway down find this paragraph, in support of Matt's theory:
ReplyDelete"The individual mandate also raised serious constitutional challenges, but Obama proceeded to warn Chief Justice Roberts not to mess with his law at the 2012 State of the Union Address. Caving to pressure, Roberts wrote a decision whose legal reasoning few ideologically neutral legal scholars could approve."
Except that, you know, Chief Justice Roberts in fact did mess with Obama's law; his insistence that the mandate was a tax might well have, if things played out differently, done serious damage to the equity of that transformational legislation.
Come to think of it, the tax meme may still. Don't tell Professor Morici though.
For gerrymandering, it's much simpler than just saying that Democratic voters live in electorally inefficient areas. The idea that Democrats are under-represented and there's not really anything we can do about it is depressing. It's simpler to think that there are evil Republicans who are cheating.
ReplyDeleteFor filibusters/discharge petitions, it's about what's dramatic. People like the idea of physical filibusters because of the drama, and discharge petitions also appeals to people for somewhat similar reasons. They like the idea of some renegade members of Congress bucking the leadership to pass common sense legislation.
Also just to be clear, when I say "dramatic" I don't quite mean that it's exciting. I mean it in the sense that those are the types of resolutions that this would have if it was a TV show.
DeleteDischarge petitions aren't quite exciting, but it's pretty easy to see how TV shows would be eager to use that as a solution to our problems.
Sarah Binder's article is thoroughly unconvincing. Her case for why a discharge petition couldn't work to end the shutdown boils down to:
ReplyDelete(1) The House only considers bills on the discharge calendar twice a month, and
(2) It is "unlikely" that the 18 Republicans will join the Democrats to undermine the Speaker.
That's it. As to (1), that's not a reason why a discharge petition can't end the shutdown, it's a reason why a discharge petition can't end the shutdown quickly. As to (2), well, duh. If there isn't a majority of House members willing to sign on, a discharge petition won't work. But again, it's not a reason why it cannot work in principle.
Strongly disagree.
DeleteShe's not saying it's technically impossible. She's saying it's not a feasible strategy. First of all, because it takes longer than the shutdown will likely last (longer, that is, than the by-far-longest shutdown on record). And, second, because the thing it would require is a relatively hard way to do things.
For example, if I understand correctly (and I wasn't fully focused on it at the time) there was a vote this afternoon which would, if it had passed, eventually given Dems a chance to bring up a clean CR. The 18 -- now 19 or 20, I think -- Republicans didn't do it.
There will be other chances, and all of those are easier than going through the discharge process.
It's technically possible, but so inconvenient that it's extremely unlikely anyone would choose that path.
To me it seems like it's to do with the simplicity of these caricaturish theories compared to the complexity of the reasoning against them.
DeleteFor example, I absolutely love this blog, and have a lot of time for kindred ones like The Monkey Cage. But I can barely get through posts about filibusters; the whole thing's just incredibly tedious for non-polscis. Whereas it's easy to grasp the notion that filibusters are an idiotic procedural loophole whereby one politician stands there speaking for days until the bill runs out of time.
Similar with discharge petitions. They seem like a relatively straightforward 'out'. I've read the argument against this idea, here and elsewhere, five or six times; yet I would struggle badly to reproduce it if asked. In fact, let's be honest, I simply have no idea what it is (though based on many other JB arguments about things I'm interested in, I'm assuming it's right!).
Again, I know the popular story about gerrymandering and its effects. And I take on trust that that's wrong. But I have no real idea why - I've forgotten, because the details are too boring.
It should be said I'm a foreigner, and maybe the moral of the story is I'm just too thick to understand this stuff. But I can reel off whole tracts of detail about, say, Watergate, gleaned from this blog.
I think I might speak for a lot of people who are fascinated by US politics but not by procedure.
Adam
I agree with Professor Bernstein.
DeleteDischarge petitions work when there's some sort of piece of ordinary legislation that is bottled up only because of the Hastert Rule, and where majority party members can get away with voting against leadership. McCain-Feingold was the perfect example of this. It sat around for years, it wasn't a dealbreaker issue with the Republican base, and it could pass with some Republican votes if the leadership would allow a floor vote.
But it doesn't work for anything else.
It's technically possible, but so inconvenient that it's extremely unlikely anyone would choose that path.
DeleteAnd yet it's the only path anyone has suggested that doesn't require the support of the Speaker. That's the whole point. It's proof in principle that a clean CR can pass without the Speaker's support. And once it is known that the votes are there, it would make no sense for Boehner to continue holding out (he'd just be delaying the inevitable).
+1
ReplyDeleteThe point is that you plan ahead, and drop this stuff in there for consideration. Or as I said modify the anti-defiency act in the past year.'
And the point #2 is quite correct as well.
But the D leadership doesn't want that. It wants a fight, and needs to grind the R down to get sequestration released for 2014.